Noble Earth by Ursula Grisham is a study of ennui and female repression and what better than the quote from Visconte’s The Leopard that director decided to use on the official page of the movie to describe it: “ For things to remain the same, everything must change. Do you understand?”

Noble Earth tells the story of Emma (Daisy Bevan, Elizabeth, The Two Faces of January, The Picture of Dorian Gray at Riverside Studios) who meets Tancredi (Elia William Cittadini) in Florence, embarking on a love affair with the endless days under the Tuscan sun. When they become engaged, soon, Emma becomes caught in family politics, learning what is expected of a woman in Florentine high society. The same beauty that intoxicated Emma reveals itself as superficial and suffocates her.

As we said Noble Earth is a study about female repression but told within a world rarely seen on screen: Italy’s hermetic nobility ( we had a taste of it in a different contest last year at the Raindance with Palace of Fun).

Talking about the movie, director Ursula Grisham said: “I was drawn to this story because I believe there are very small and subtle ways in which women subjugate themselves and that it’s important to explore these details as a way to deconstruct the trope of woman as victim. Emma enters into a fantasy world and expects nothing sinister to lie beneath its polished veneer. Though rooted in a quest for identity, her motivations to stay in Italy are aesthetic. Ennui is thus the only logical outcome of her journey. I wanted to explore this feeling in all its texture. To capture the milieu of Florentine’s disposed nobility as authentically as possible the production cast real people and shot in real locations. Tancredi’s family and friends are mostly played by real-life Florentine nobles who joined the projects because this generation, too, seeks to understand the ennui that has come to define them.”

In the cast also the new Italian rising star Pierangelo Menci (Neverlake, Mind The End, Non Uccidere, Un Passo dal Cielo) as Lapo.

Noble Earth will be screen at 25th Raindance at Vue Leicester Square on Thursday September 21st (World Premiere) at 12:45 pm and on Thursday September 28th at 6 pm.